Tagged ‘Fear’

Reflecting on a tumultuous year of Occupy movements and the Arab Spring, the U.S. government has passed not one, but two new anti-protesting laws. With the exclusion of single word – from “willingly and knowingly” to simply “knowingly” – the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act is further restricting Americans first amendment rights.

“I thought that NPR did the right thing,” Ahmed Rehab said. “They have a reputation to protect, and clearly his unobjective and sensational characterizations were not a good fit for their objective standards of journalism.”

Rehab says comments like those made by Williams encourage the stereotypes that generate fear of Muslims.

“There seems to be a refusal and willful ignorance when it comes to the simple notion that Muslims are not one in the same with terrorists,” he said.

“My column on the Council on American-Islamic Relations drew the expected range of response,” writes Neil Steinberg. “There was much castigating me as a “useful idiot” blind to the gathering Islamic peril (one reader recommended a book by Brigitte Gabriel that’s actually called They Must Be Stopped, which sounds like the title of a 1950s B-movie about giant ants).
“But there were a surprising number of thoughtful, warm, humane responses, and not just from Muslims grateful to seeing themselves depicted as human beings.”

Why do Westerners succumb to anti-Muslim fear? It’s a natural reflex — certainly what terrorists expect when they claim their acts are in the name of Islam. They want to drive a wedge between the cultures, lest a harmonious blending undercut their extremism and deprive them of the enemy they crave. It’s a partnership, the terrorists and the fear-mongers, working in harmony and tacit agreement.